Nation IN BRIEF / FLORIDA

Boy, 15, Gets Life in Prison in Girl's Death

A 15-year-old boy was sentenced in Bartow, Fla., to life in prison with no chance of parole for beating and stabbing an 8-year-old neighbor girl whose body was found days later stuffed in the frame of his water bed. Joshua Phillips, 15, was tried as an adult last month and convicted of first-degree murder in the Nov. 3 death of Maddie Clifton. The girl lived across the street from him in a Jacksonville neighborhood. Florida law bars the death penalty for killers younger than 16. Joshua was 14 at the time of the murder.